Don't believe the Mainstream Comedians! They take credit for all my own original and witty comments! I have the best wit, and MSC rarely let on about more than half of it! Only the yuge crowds who come and pay to listen to me directly get to cheer and applaud at my other half-wit comments!

(Or, to put it another way: Great minds think alike. Fools never differ.)

The problem with Empty Suit is his mouth. His responses should be measured. His position has gravitas out of proportion to his intellect. Everything sends a message. Compared to Empty Suit, George Bush ver 2, should have a head carved in Rushmore. I wish he was sitting in the office now.

Empty seems utterly oblivious. And he isn't getting anything done. He sends the wrong message. It's irrelevant what anybody might have done some other time. This was now. Condemn the violence and shut up. Don't defend anyone. That isn't his job.

morriswalters wrote:The problem with Empty Suit is his mouth. His responses should be measured. His position has gravitas out of proportion to his intellect. Everything sends a message.

Compared to some of the low-lights, his latest electronic eructations have actually not been that 'bad'. Policywise, I would say that they're not what I'd personally say, but I'm seeing less to objectively complain about.

@realDonaldTrump, 14 hours ago wrote:North Korea has conducted a major Nuclear Test. Their words and actions continue to be very hostile and dangerous to the United States.......North Korea is a rogue nation which has become a great threat and embarrassment to China, which is trying to help but with little success.

Almost a (non-Trump) political podium speech. I can pretty much hear this in Obama's voice. It's even "well, you're trying, and we love ya for it" to China.

@realDonaldTrump, 14 hours ago wrote:South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!

The worst of this set with the "they only understand one thing!", but I could put Reagan's voice (from a time prior to "tear down this wall!") onto this. I know that's not necessarily a ringing endorsement, but the kind of legacy reset from RR's time would be quite welcome, right now.

@realDonaldTrump, 10 hours ago wrote:I will be meeting General Kelly, General Mattis and other military leaders at the White House to discuss North Korea. Thank you.

Almost sane. This is what the @POTUS account should be doing, if anything. A clear "what I am having for my lunch"-type broadcast except with presidential business. This does not sound like Trump. (I actually think someone else's hand is bebind it) but like a proper career politician who studies what they say.

@realDonaldTrump, 10 hours ago wrote:The United States is considering, in addition to other options, stopping all trade with any country doing business with North Korea.

Less good. This is drifting back into stump-speech rhetiric territory, diplomatic conferences, press-briefings at bilateral meetings of allies, etc. Still better than what we're used to.

At this rate, the auto-repliers (with by bot or by compulsive manual following and reacting) who are all for the Impeachment, etc, are now starting to look as unreasonably partisan as the various auto-repliers in the support-Trump camp. While he keeps on tweeting not-mad things, there's not much persuasion possible to make any remaining middle-floating-but-tending-Trumpwise people flip to anti-Trump, with diminishing returns and possibly (if some of the pro-Trump-spams eases off, leaving the only obvious trolls on the other side).

But it'll just take one return to form (crowd sizes, blame games, fake #fakenews because it's plainly realnews, etc) to break this spell. The advisors are probably working unpaid overtime to prevent this, and then all they need to worry about is ad-hoc utterances at a televised Trump Rally microphone as he plays for the 'home' crowd but stirs up the bovine manure just enough..

@realDonaldTrump, 14 hours ago wrote:North Korea has conducted a major Nuclear Test. Their words and actions continue to be very hostile and dangerous to the United States.......North Korea is a rogue nation which has become a great threat and embarrassment to China, which is trying to help but with little success.

Almost a (non-Trump) political podium speech. I can pretty much hear this in Obama's voice. It's even "well, you're trying, and we love ya for it" to China.

I read it the other way around, as a pointed acknowledgement of the fact that they haven't been able to keep their neighbor in line, just couched in vaguely sympathetic terms - more "they're a 'great embarrassment' to you, but I suppose you're trying."

@realDonaldTrump, 14 hours ago wrote:South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!

The worst of this set with the "they only understand one thing!", but I could put Reagan's voice (from a time prior to "tear down this wall!") onto this. I know that's not necessarily a ringing endorsement, but the kind of legacy reset from RR's time would be quite welcome, right now.

I'm not clear whether "as I have told them" means "I've just been on the phone to South Korea and I'm telling you what I told them", or whether he means "I told them it wouldn't work and I was right. I'm always right. I'm the rightest". As you say, these tweets per se are fairly innocuous if you haven't been sensitised to what an utter arse he is. Chucking in parenthetical self-congratulation is such a standard part of his style that I might be seeing it where it isn't there.

EDIT:

morriswalters wrote:... Empty Suit ...

By the way, this has been bugging me for a while. Does this epithet work for anyone? When Morris first started using it, I was flummoxed, since I hadn't come across the phrase before; and on the face of it, it didn't seem to describe Trump. The trouble is that over here we generally use "suit" to describe a faceless middle manager or bureaucrat, and "empty suit" just sounds like an extension of the same concept. Having looked up the phrase, I kind of see what Morris is getting at, in that an "empty suit" is somebody who has reached a far more senior position than they deserve through family connections or having gone to the right school, or somebody who claims greater expertise than they have. Maybe it's the phrase itself that I'm having trouble with: somehow the metaphor doesn't make me think of the blustering, tantrum-throwing, aggressive occupant of the White House.

orthogon wrote:By the way, this has been bugging me for a while. Does this epithet work for anyone?

Sorry it bothers you. I refuse to speak his name in public. Or to have the header with his name near mine. It describes how I see him. He brings a brain but no corresponding intellect. A man with intellect knows he can be wrong. He measures his words to say what he wants to say, in a fashion that minimizes the damage that his words can cause. A man with intellect controls his fucking lizard.

When he talks about violence, he deplores the violence with out regard to who causes it.

When he talks about Korea, he focuses on the threat. And leaves it to the imagination of the man he is looking at, about what will happen if we must act. The NKorean Empty Suit knows what we can do, let him fear that. And finally, if we must act, he must know when.

I don't insist that the man must be right, but I expect him to make the best decisions he can.

And others I am not going to take the time to elucidate.

He has none of the traits I expect to see, and it's why he's an empty suit. empty suits are dangerous because they are empty. Other people try to fill them.

[list=][/list]Rumor has it that DACA is dead, and it's being sent over to Congress to die instead of making Trump alone at fault. http://www.npr.org/2017/09/05/546423550 ... ess-to-actEdit added link. So yea, the rumors were accurate. Congress is of course busy as hell with multiple emergencies like Harvey relief and debt limit stuff, so yea, looks like ice just found a convenient list of names and addresses of illegals.

Did he even have a choice on that? DACA clearly oversteps the constitutional authority given to the president. It was going to be overturned in the courts if nothing was done. At least this way, they can give a reasonable grace period to allow congress to act. I don't have much confidence that they will based on past experience, but this has enough bipartisan support to get through congress if both parties are willing to accept even minor compromises.

Trump, in an apparent twist to fuck over his own party, begins to side with Democrats on a number of issues.

Granted, Trump may just be recognizing that all of the goals in September won't be accomplished without the Democrats. So Trump is making a decent play here as far as governance goes.

* Hurricane Harvey aid is now tied to the Debt Ceiling* Talks of repealing the Debt Ceiling once and for all

This weakens the Republican's ability to make demands on the Debt Ceiling or Tax Reform. So Republicans seem pissed. On the other hand, it ensures that Harvey aid and Debt Ceiling issues are basically dealt with.

KnightExemplar wrote:Trump, in an apparent twist to fuck over his own party, begins to side with Democrats on a number of issues.

Granted, Trump may just be recognizing that all of the goals in September won't be accomplished without the Democrats. So Trump is making a decent play here as far as governance goes.

* Hurricane Harvey aid is now tied to the Debt Ceiling* Talks of repealing the Debt Ceiling once and for all

This weakens the Republican's ability to make demands on the Debt Ceiling or Tax Reform. So Republicans seem pissed. On the other hand, it ensures that Harvey aid and Debt Ceiling issues are basically dealt with.

This might be a Sessions type tiff he has with the GOP before reverting back to form. Always assume that Trump does weird things all the time and reverts back to Nationalists racist Trump. I don't see much compromise here legislatively, the strange part is only Trump embarrassing Paul Ryan the day Ryan yells at the Democrats. I'll perk up if he reinstates DACA. Or maybe, the GOP turns on him for siding with Democrats during a disaster.i don't expect much. For now, I just hear a lot of whining from the majority party that they didn't get everything. Nothingburger.

KnightExemplar wrote:Trump, in an apparent twist to fuck over his own party, begins to side with Democrats on a number of issues.

Granted, Trump may just be recognizing that all of the goals in September won't be accomplished without the Democrats. So Trump is making a decent play here as far as governance goes.

* Hurricane Harvey aid is now tied to the Debt Ceiling* Talks of repealing the Debt Ceiling once and for all

This weakens the Republican's ability to make demands on the Debt Ceiling or Tax Reform. So Republicans seem pissed. On the other hand, it ensures that Harvey aid and Debt Ceiling issues are basically dealt with.

This might be a Sessions type tiff he has with the GOP before reverting back to form. Always assume that Trump does weird things all the time and reverts back to Nationalists racist Trump. I don't see much compromise here legislatively, the strange part is only Trump embarrassing Paul Ryan the day Ryan yells at the Democrats. I'll perk up if he reinstates DACA. Or maybe, the GOP turns on him for siding with Democrats during a disaster.i don't expect much. For now, I just hear a lot of whining from the majority party that they didn't get everything. Nothingburger.

Honestly, I think Trump is once again, testing to see how far the loyalty of his base is. Whether his base is more loyal to him, or to Republicans in general.

Trump is figuring out that his base is more loyal to him, rather than Republicans.

KnightExemplar wrote:Trump, in an apparent twist to fuck over his own party, begins to side with Democrats on a number of issues.

Granted, Trump may just be recognizing that all of the goals in September won't be accomplished without the Democrats. So Trump is making a decent play here as far as governance goes.

* Hurricane Harvey aid is now tied to the Debt Ceiling* Talks of repealing the Debt Ceiling once and for all

This weakens the Republican's ability to make demands on the Debt Ceiling or Tax Reform. So Republicans seem pissed. On the other hand, it ensures that Harvey aid and Debt Ceiling issues are basically dealt with.

This might be a Sessions type tiff he has with the GOP before reverting back to form. Always assume that Trump does weird things all the time and reverts back to Nationalists racist Trump. I don't see much compromise here legislatively, the strange part is only Trump embarrassing Paul Ryan the day Ryan yells at the Democrats. I'll perk up if he reinstates DACA. Or maybe, the GOP turns on him for siding with Democrats during a disaster.i don't expect much. For now, I just hear a lot of whining from the majority party that they didn't get everything. Nothingburger.

Honestly, I think Trump is once again, testing to see how far the loyalty of his base is. Whether his base is more loyal to him, or to Republicans in general.

Trump is figuring out that his base is more loyal to him, rather than Republicans.

The more he tests it, the more it might become evident it's only 20-25% of voters. If Breitbart continues to attack his working with Pelosi and Schumer, it might drop significantly below that (with the off-chance of grabbing back some of his more moderate voters).

Liri wrote:The more he tests it, the more it might become evident it's only 20-25% of voters. If Breitbart continues to attack his working with Pelosi and Schumer, it might drop significantly below that (with the off-chance of grabbing back some of his more moderate voters).

Absolute numbers don't mean much.

20 to 25% is easily the "majority of the majority" (ie: majority of Republicans). Any Republican who goes against him gets the Jeff Flake treatment. In any case, Trump's approval rating is holding steady at 37%ish, and that's a more accurate picture of the size of Trump's base.

We are hinting around about the media stuff so much here that we may want to get just to the issue. I think we are really saying the Times, Politico, NBC News, etc., can’t say “Clinton is right in some ways” without saying “we were wrong.” But journalists are supposed to be for truth, not defending themselves at all costs like businesses or politicians.

That headline only tells part of the story (the article itself is better), but Trump had a working dinner at the White House last night with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and apparently the two sides have come to an agreement in principle on DACA. Trump will support a DACA replacement law in exchange for the Democrats agreeing to increased border security (although not The Wall). Republican leadership was not invited to this meeting.

This is the President Trump I was hoping to see. It's a practical deal that would - if everything can get through Congress - put DACA on unambiguously firm Constitutional grounds, unlike its original incarnation, both sides get something they want, and neither party would be giving up something that the mainstream of the party finds unacceptable. Trump's base, however, is pissed. Laura Ingraham (who is not only an anti-"illegal" hardliner, but also vocal about wanting legal immigration curbed) was railing against Trump "supporting amnesty for at least 800,000 illegals" and abandoning The Wall during the ~half hour of her show I happened to hear this morning, and her callers were all similarly upset*. The article mentions Breitbart coming out against him for this, too.

* I don't know what level of call screening her producer does, so that might be a bit of a shaped consensus. There were a couple off-topic calls that caught her somewhat off guard, though, including one that was sort of incomprehensible ranting, so the screening can't be too stringent.

[Edited to say: Trump did something else that infuriated me today, but there's plenty of other stuff going on in the world that is more deserving of my attention, time, and energy. And yours, too. So never mind.]

I wonder how many times he's "finally crossed the line" now. Must be into triple digits. We keep discovering that the line wasn't where we thought it was.

Even our pliant PM has got pissed off with his latest Twitter Twatishness following yesterday's attempted bombing in London. Inexplicably, he appears to have overlooked his normal attack on Saddiq Khan for mayoring-while-muslim.

It definitely seems that he's gotten a new guy(/gal) to work his Twitter. Notice suddenly loads of image-based sentiments to be 'down wid der kidz'. (Bandwidth-heavy, and harder to glance through, meaningfully.)

It would definitely explain his sudden Twitter-shift if his latest Comms Director (whoever it is this weektoday this morning) is getting him to say things that he should be saying, instead of what he would be saying. Which will probably disappoint his core-core supporters, even as much as it provides fuel to the anti-Trump photoshoppers who can now parody the images (put 'original thoughts' in new messages, opposibg illustrative messages to the old caption etc).

We may soon have to rely upon his off-autocue comments to get the real @realDonaldTrump again. This may not be a totally bad thing. Especially if they lock him down to the outside world like Aung San Suu Kyi (currently, that is) and just let the rest of the government do things how they should be done (unlike Myanmar).

HHS releases report on the fiscal impact of refugees, removing part that shows that they pay $269bn in taxes, and emphasizing the part that they receive $206bn in services after the Trump administration got its claws on it, turning it into yet another piece of white supremacist propaganda.

Senate Republicans championing a final effort to pass a bill to repeal and replace parts of the Affordable Care Act are selling it as a way to offer more flexibility to states. But while it would provide new possibilities for states that have largely rejected the ACA, the states that have embraced the law would be stuck designing a new health system with far less money.

The law would upend the way the federal government currently helps pay for health insurance — covering some of the cost of commercial insurance for some groups and funding Medicaid for others — and give states more open-ended dollars. To get the funds, governors would be forced to take on the political third rail of drafting, passing and enacting health insurance legislation that would change coverage for millions of people. And they would have just two years to do it.

The latest GOP legislation, known as Graham-Cassidy for Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, is expected to be brought up for a vote in the Senate next week. It includes several provisions found in previous bills that failed to make it through the Senate this year: It would end many of the rules and regulations of the Affordable Care Act that are very unpopular, including the mandate that most individuals have insurance or pay a fine, as well as the requirement that most businesses offer insurance to their employees. It would also allow states to waive the rules requiring insurers to sell comprehensive coverage and requiring them to provide the same coverage to people with pre-existing conditions as people with fewer health problems. This gives states that have been unhappy with the Affordable Care Act’s regulations more leeway in structuring health insurance coverage.

But the Graham-Cassidy bill would also end the expansion of Medicaid, the health insurance program for people with low incomes, essentially reverting eligibility limits back to what they were before the ACA. The bill would also cap federal spending on those parts of the program that existed before the Affordable Care Act. It would additionally get rid of the subsidies that help low-income people who don’t get insurance from an employer buy coverage and prevent federal money from going to Planned Parenthood for a year. States that want to keep helping the people these programs cover would have to come up with new ways to do so.

The quote from Pat Roberts is surprisingly up front about the reasoning

If we do nothing, I think it has a tremendous impact on the 2018 elections. And whether or not Republicans still maintain control and we have the gavel.

This is perhaps the most patronizing thing I could imagine someone saying. "We're doing this thing mainly because we promised to so we can be voted back into office and maintain our party in power". The sad thing is he's probably right in that even if this piece of garbage legislation goes through, people will see as "The Affordable Care Act repealed" and they'll keep voting republican. At least until they realize how much is screws them, but that'll probably be after the election so no loss there.